There are upwards of seventeen hundred works extant on the subject of diet and digestion. Sufferers may study the question till they are driven mad by doubt and dyspepsia, and difference of opinions among the doctors. Fordyce saw no use in the saliva, and Paris maintains that without it digestion is not. “Quot homines, tot sententiæ,” is as applicable here as in every other vexed question. But Paris’s book on Diet is the safest guide I know for a man who, being dyspeptic, wants to cure himself, or simply to discover the definement of his degree of suffering. On the other hand, every man may find comfort in the reflection, that with early hours, abundant exercise, generous diet, but not too much of it, and occupation,—without which a worse devil than the former enters on possession of the victim,—dyspepsia cannot assume a chronic form. It may be a casual visitor, but it will be the easiest thing possible to get rid of him. But philosophy has said as much from the beginning, and yet dyspepsia prevails and physicians ride in carriages. Exactly! and why? Because philosophers themselves, like the Stoic gentleman in Marmontel, after praising simplicity of living, sink to sleep, on heavy suppers and beds of down, with the suicidal remark, that “Le Luxe est une jolie chose.”
We must neither act unreservedly on the dictum of books, nor copy slavishly the examples of others, if we would have the digestion in a healthy condition. There is a self-monitor that may safely be consulted. Of his existence there can be no doubt; for every man who wakes with a headache most ungratefully blames that same monitory “self.”
If any class may fairly complain of others in this respect, rather than of themselves, it is the “babies.” The Rajpoots do not slay half so many of their infants out of pride, as we do by indiscreet dieting; or, to speak plainly, over-feeding. The New Zealand mother is not more foolish, who thrusts stones down the throat of her babe, in order to make him a stern and fearless warrior, and only mars him for a healthy man. And Christian matrons have been quite as savage without intending it. Brantome’s uncle, Chastargnerage, was no sooner weaned than, by the advice of a Neapolitan physician, he took gold, steel, and iron, (in powders,) mixed up with all he ate and drank. This regimen he followed until he was twelve years old, by which time (we are asked to believe) it had so strengthened him that he could stop a wild bull in full course. This diet, however, seems little likely to have produced such an effect. As soon might one expect that the Bolton ass, which chewed tobacco and took snuff, was made swift as a race-horse by so doing. I think that it is of Dean Nowell it is said, that he grew strong by drinking ale. He was the accidental inventor of bottled ale. He was out fishing with a bottle of the freshly-drawn beverage at his side, when intelligence reached him touching the peril his life was in, under Mary, which made him fly, after flinging away his rod, and thrusting his bottle of ale under the grass. When he could again safely resort to the same spot, he looked for his bottle, which, on being disturbed, drove out the cork like a pellet from a gun, and contained so creamy a fluid, that the Dean, noting the fact, and rejoicing therein, took care to be well provided with the same thenceforward. As Henry II. was the first King who acted as sewer, and placed the boar’s head on the table of his young son, just crowned, so Dean Nowell was the first church dignitary who laid the foundation of red noses, by bringing bottled ale to the notice of the clergy. There is an old tradition, that what this ale used to do for churchmen, cider used to effect for Africans.
As we have said, “moderation” is the first principle of digestion; and as, according to the Latin proverb, “water gives moderation,” it behoves us to look for a few minutes into the much praised, and little appreciated, aqua pura.
WATER.
A Kentucky man, who was lately at one of the great tables in an hotel in the States, where the bill of fare was in French, after sorely puzzling himself with descriptions which he could not comprehend, “cotelettes à la Maintenon” and “œufs à la braise;” exclaimed, “I shall go back to first principles: give me some roast beef!” So, after speaking of the birth of him, whose putative father has lent a name to liberal hosts, let us also fall back upon first principles, and contemplate the uses of water.
There is nothing in nature more useful; but, commonly speaking, you can neither buy any thing with it, nor get any article for it in exchange. Adam Smith strikingly compares with it the uselessness and the value of a diamond: the latter has scarcely any value in use, but much that is valuable may be had in exchange for it. In the desert a cup full of water is worth one full of diamonds; that is, in certain emergencies. The diamond and the water illustrate the difference between value in use and value in exchange.
If water be not, according to Pindar and the legend over the Bath Pump-Room, the best of things, few things would attain to excellence without it. Greek philosophy was not wrong which made it the principle of life, and the popular belief scarcely erred in seeing in every stream, spring, and fountain a resident deity. Water was so reverenced by certain ancient nations, that they would never desecrate it by purifying themselves therewith! The ancient Persians and Cappadocians exemplified their devotion by personal dirtiness. In presence of the visible power of the stream, altars were raised, and adoration paid to the god whose existence was evidenced by such power. The Egyptians gave their divine river more than prayers, because their dependence on it was more absolute than that of other nations on their respective streams. The Nile, swelling beneficently, bestowed food, health, and therewith content on the Egyptians; and they, in return, flung gratefully into the stream corn, sugar, and fruit. When human sacrifices were made to rivers, it was probably because the river was recognised as giving life, and was worthy of being paid in kind. We may smile superciliously at this old reverence for the “liquid good,” but there was connected therewith much that we might profitably condescend to copy. Greece had her officers appointed to keep her streams pure. Had those officials exposed the people to drink such indescribable matter as we draw from the Thames, they would have been thrown into it by popular indignation. In Rome, Ancus Martius was long remembered, not for his victories, but for his care to supply the city with salubrious and sufficient water; and if people generally cursed Nero for his crimes, they acknowledged that he had at least not damaged the public aqueducts; and that in his reign ice-houses were first built, the contents of which enabled thousands to quaff the cool beverage which is so commendably spoken of by Aristotle.
The fountains were the ornaments of the public places, as the crystal ampulla, with its slender neck and its globular body, was of the sideboards of private houses in Rome. The common people drank to excess, both of hot water and cold: the former they drank in large measures;—this was in winter, and in taverns where they fed largely upon pork, and drank the water as a stimulant! The Emperor Claudius looked upon this regimen as an immoral indulgence, and he closed the taverns where proprietors injured the public stomach by such a diet. Some Romans were so particular as to boil the water they intended to drink, in vessels at their own table. They were like the epicures who never intrust the boiling of an egg to their own cooks. We may notice that Augustus employed it lavishly, both as a bather and drinker. The “faculty” were unanimous in recommending a similar use of it, and some of these gentlemen made considerable fortunes by the various methods of applying it. For instance, patients resorting to Charmis, to take cold baths in winter under his direction, were required to pay him a consulting fee of £800! He was the first “water-cure” Doctor that ever practised, and he realized a fortune such as his successors may aim at in vain.
Horace Walpole, forgetting what he had once before said, namely, that diet and patience formed the universal panacea, declared that his “great nostrum was the use of cold water, inwardly and outwardly, on all occasions, and that with disregard of precaution against catching cold. I have often,” he continues, “had the gout in my face and eyes, and instantly dip my head in a pail of cold water, which always cures it, and does not send it any where else.” And again, alluding to another use of water, he says sneeringly, “Whether Christianity will be laid aside I cannot say. As nothing of the spirit is left, the forms, I think, signify very little. Surely, it is not an age of morality and principle; does it import whether profligacy is baptized or not?”